'Game of Thrones' Recap: "Beyond the Wall"
Kyra Power ’19 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the sixth episode of season seven of Game of Thrones.
Oh, boy. Everything in this episode is action packed and moving fast, except for this Winterfell plot-line, which feels like it will drag on for all of eternity.
Arya (Maisie Williams) is fully embracing her angsty teen “you just don’t understand me!” silently-leaves-room-because-she’s-a-trained-assassin phase. Yes, Sansa (Sophie Turner) is a little power hungry and flawed, but can you blame her? Jon (Kit Harrington) is great in battle and tactic, but has zero political awareness; Sansa knows the game. Arya, though, only sees the same sister that she left years ago trying to move in on her favorite sibling’s spot: ruler of the North. And because she’s a psychotic killer (honestly, bless her soul, what a title), she’s dealing with it in really weird ways, which end with Sansa shocked. Like most Arya plot-lines, this is just being dragged out (throwback to four episodes of her watching a play, literally), but hopefully now that Sansa has sent Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) to King’s Landing in her place, we will finally resolve this next episode. Can we please just get the Stark sisters bonding, like, once? Littlefinger (Aidan Gillan) is trying to pit them against each other and neither of them realize. I feel like all their problems would be solved if they sat down and talked through all the messed up stuff that has happened to them for the past however many years.
On to the most exciting part of this episode: beyond the freaking wall. Here, we finally see each character bond and talk and everything is grand. That is until a bear from the army of the dead charges them. Then, they decide to lay a trap for a couple of army soldiers to bring one back as proof of their existence to the world. This slowly turns into them being surrounded by the entire army. Gendry (Joe Dempsie) runs back to Eastwatch to send a raven to Dany (Emilia Clarke). She ignores Tyrion’s (Peter Dinklage) advice again and flies North with her dragons. I’m starting to wonder what Tyrion’s purpose is now. Daenerys has refused to listen to him over and over to little consequence. Why is he still here? Does their conversation about who will succeed Daenerys if she dies mean that she is going to die now?! Anyway, while Dany was soaring North, the Northern Expedition Squad is chilling on some rocks in the middle of a frozen lake surrounded by dead men for a couple of days. Jon wants to wait to see if Dany would show up, but they decide that they should try and get to the white walkers as they discover that, if you can kill the white walker that brought the dead back, all his converted soldiers collapse. Hm. I didn’t notice anyone collapsing at Hardhome when Jon killed the white walker there, though. I guess I just won’t dig too deep into that plot hole.
Jon drags himself out and then after literally seven season is reunited with weird ice-man, Uncle Benjan, who then immediately sacrifices himself and puts Jon on a horse back to Eastwatch. There, Dany is putting off leaving without him and luckily she waits. Now, they’re on a boat, heading to, presumably, King’s Landing.
Others have pointed out that Sansa and Arya might be playing Littlefinger. In particular, Arya went off on Sansa about what she was wearing at Ned’s beheading, seeming to imply that Sansa didn’t really care about anything other than her chance to be a queen. But it also let Sansa know that Arya was there and saw it all, which means she also saw Sansa collapse on the ground sobbing. Arya doesn’t mention that and, interestingly, Sansa doesn’t defend herself by bringing it up.
One other comment, and this one is my own, is that I think the dagger has some significance in their communication. Bran hands it Arya, and she takes the initiative. Arya hands it to Sansa, and now it’s time to see what Sansa does.
angsty teens !!